theSun | MONDAY DECEMBER 15 2008
news without borders
China holds anti-terror
drill after Mumbai
BEIJING: Armed police in Beijing
conducted an anti-terror drill at
a local hotel on Saturday to boost
its response capabilities against
Mumbai-style militant attacks, state
media reported.
Gunmen killed 179 people in the
Indian financial capital in a series
of raids on targets including luxury
hotels.
Members of the Beijing Special
Armed Police Unit (BSAPU), a
crack security unit, practised
jumping out of a helicopter using
ropes above the ground, Xinhua
news agency said on Saturday.
“They then shot targets of
swaying eggs 15m away within
1.5 seconds to practise killing
terrorists,” the agency said, adding
that police also broke through
windows to rescue “hostages.”
“The drill was aimed at
preventing terrorist attacks,
especially after the Mumbai attack
which had definite targets and
careful planning,” Xinhua quoted
Xiao Yong, the head of the unit,
as saying. China had noticed the
way in which the gunmen had
attacked different sites in different
ways including through shooting,
kidnapping and a gunfight with the
police, Xiao said.
China and India held an
anti-terrorism exercise earlier this
week in a show of cooperation
between the rival Asian nations.
China is a long-time friend of
Pakistan, which India has said
was a base of the militants who
attacked Mumbai. Beijing has
nonetheless been keen to be seen
to be working with New Delhi in
the aftermath of the attacks.
China says it has its own
problems with armed militants
seeking independence for its
restive western regions of Xinjiang
and Tibet.
In October it released a list
of eight Islamic “terrorists”,
who it said wanted to make
heavily Muslim Xinjiang into
an independent state called East
Turkestan, and had tried to bomb
targets to disrupt August’s Beijing
Olympic Games. – Reuters
Study: Breast changes tell
whether treatment works
WASHINGTON: It may be
possible to predict which
breast cancer patients will be
helped by tamoxifen based
on changes in so-called
breast density, researchers
reported on Saturday.
Women with dense
breasts – a term meaning
they have more non-fatty
tissue – are known to have a
higher risk of breast cancer
and the study suggests that
lowering density using
tamoxifen also lowers the
chances tumours will come
back.
Women whose breasts
became noticeably less
dense after a year or so
of taking tamoxifen had a
63% reduced risk of breast
Hughes cancer, the team of British
researchers told a breast
unmoved cancer meeting in San
after Antonio, Texas.
Cahill “It is important to find
a way to predict who will
downs respond to tamoxifen, and
City changes in breast density
pg 35 may constitute an early
indicator of benefit,” said
Jack Cuzick of the Wolfson
Institute of Preventive
Medicine in London.
He said about 10% of
women have dense breasts.
Such breasts are harder to
read on mammograms but
there is evidence the tissue
in their breasts may be more
cancer-prone.
“Women with dense
breasts are typically at four
to five times the risk of
developing breast cancer
than women without
dense breasts,” Cuzick told
reporters in a telephone
briefing.
Cuzick’s team had
conducted one of many
studies that showed high-
risk women who took
tamoxifen were at least 40%
less likely to either develop
breast cancer, or to have it
come back.
They went back
and looked at all the
mammograms of the more
than 1,000 women who took
part in the study.
If a woman’s breast
density did not change
during the treatment, she
was much more likely to
develop cancer despite
taking tamoxifen, Cuzick
told the meeting.
11
“Women who lost 10%
or more in breast density
-- 40% of the women
getting tamoxifen -- had a
63%, almost a two-thirds,
reduction in all breast
cancer,” he told the briefing.
Cuzick stressed the study
only looked at tamoxifen and
not at other treatments, such
as the newer drugs known
as aromatase inhibitors.
But he said it validated the
idea of using breast density
as a way of telling whether
a treatment is working,
whether tamoxifen or
something else.
“If a woman doesn’t show
breast density dropping
within a year or so, you
might want to consider other
therapy,” Cuzick said.
In another report, a
team at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota said
they found some clues as
to why dense breast tissue
is more likely to develop
tumors.
Dense breast tissue
contains more cells believed
to give rise to breast cancer,
Dr Karthik Ghosh told the
meeting. – Reuters